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MESSAGE OF THE GOVERNOR.

It would be well to so frame the law as to permit all manufacturing,transportation and other corporations whose purpose may not be the ownershipof lands, to possess. use and retain as much real estate as may be properfor corporate necessarities; That those engaged in the building and improvementof harbors, homes and additions to towns and cities shall not bechecked in their work; That the wholesome laws, regulating and controllingirrigation and mining companies in the improvement, developmentand use of arid and mining land, shall not be affected; That all corporationsengaged in redeeming swamp or overflowed lands may go on undisturbed.Under existing conditions there is no public necessity of placing any furtherrestrictions around corporations engaged now in improvements andindustries beneficiai to the public. The aim of the movement is to preventthe further investment by land corporations in agricultural and grazing landsand all other lands for speculative purposes.THE RAILWAY COMMISSION.Before the adoption of the Commission Amendment it became generallyconceded that under the constitution the power to make and regulate thetraffic rates to be collected by the railways in this State was vested in thelegislature without authority to delegate it to any government agency. Thispower was partially exercised only by the legislature, and therefore it wasperformed without restraint by the chosen agents of the corporations themselves.The authority to collect tolls or traffic taxes is a governmental function thatcannot be legally exercised except by the consent of the government. Untilthe Commission was created the railroads, by consent of the State, exercisedthis franchise, at will raising, lowering, changing or maintaining traffic ratescollected from the commerce of Texas without notice to or consulting theshipper, undisturbed from any source. The Commission law simply withdrewthis franchise from the railway companies, who had always actedthrough agents selected by themselves, and delegated it to three citizens asagents of the State government, called a Railway Commission. By that lawthe power and authority was vested in the Commission, and it was made itsduty to adopt all necessary rates, charges and regulations to govern and controlrailroad freight and passenger tariffs; to correct abuses, to prevent unjustdiscriminations and extortions therein and to enforce tile same by havingpenalties inflicted on the delinquent companies as prescribed in the act throughthe proper courts of the State having jurisdiction of the case. The mainobject and purpose of the law was to vest the State agents with power todo under oath what the corporate agents without oath had always done-tolevy the traffic taxes or tolls the people must pay when they ship over thepublic carriers, called railroads.The law was appropriately divided into several parts the power andeffect of neither one of which depends on the existence of the other.First. The first pertains to the organization of the Commission and itsauthority to establish rates and prescribe rules and regulations to govern thetransportation of traffic. In the exercise of this power, the Commission is required,before it can establish any rate, to give the railroad company to be affectedthereby ten days notice of the time and place when and where it shall befixed, and guarantees the company the right to be fully heard at such timeand place to the end that justice may be done; and provides for a public investigationand for process to enforce the attendance of its witnesses.Second. The next division of the law simply prescribes a rule of evidenceto govern all the parties, including the railways and other persons, when the